THE planned comprehensive probe of the oil sector and the proposed Senate inquiry into the activities of the FCT under the El-rufai administration may be the beginning of an investigation of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, The Guardian has learnt.
While the Senate probe of the FCT will open on Tuesday, no time schedule has been set for the expected enquiry into the nation’s honey pot – an investigation being prompted by the report of a committee.
The searchlight will be beamed on how Obasanjo, who acted as the Oil Minister in the better part of his tenure, ran the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other oil deals from 1999 to 2007.
The imminent inquiry will target what the NNPC had done with accessed funds not paid into the Federation Account.
Other areas that may be probed in the oil sector include the following:
NNPC: Management of trillions of Naira earned by the country from sale of crude oil.
AP: Sale of African Petroleum and crude oil lifting contracts by government.
PTDF: Management of funds in the accounts of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund.
President Umaru Yar’Adua has reportedly received a comprehensive dossier on oily deals by the NNPC.
Insiders said what the President saw about the commission has upset him and “he is fully persuaded that if inquiries get to that dirty arena, there may be too much public outcry for the crucifixion of his predecessor.”
But it was gathered that the presidency, which has the legal authority to handle a Commission of Inquiry on the issue through the Commission of Inquiry Act, will not be directly involved in the probe.
Indeed, President Yar’Adua was reported, during last month’s PDP convention, as saying that he would not be personally involved in any acts that would publicly disgrace his predecessor.
However, the President’s reticent mood on the issue was said to have been leaked to some hard liners in an anti-graft agency and the National Assembly.
“So, sooner than later, the president, that has been under pressure to inquire into the deals in the oil sector, will watch, as another committee in the National Assembly will take up the gauntlet of public hearing on the NNPC and indeed the oil industry, where the former president was also minister for eight years,” a presidency source said.
The tone for the imminent searchlight on the oil industry is set by recent calls across the country, especially in the wake of the power sector probe by the committee of the House of Representatives.
The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, according to its publicity secretary, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, is calling for an urgent probe of the Obasanjo-led government. “We want to know those behind the accounts and on whose authority the sleaze was perpetrated,” he said.
The group had accused the Obasanjo government of fixing the benchmarks for the nation’s budgets at “rock-bottom” in order to rake in the obnoxious excess crude funds, which were shared by officials.
Shortly after the statement, the Yar’Adua administration ordered a probe into funds inflow into the Federation Account.
Although the periods covered was not stated, the inquiry was to cover funds remitted by all revenue generating and mobilising agencies into the Federation Account.
The presidency is reportedly unimpressed by the level of compliance of organisations such as the NNPC, Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) with the rules on revenue remittance to the Federation Account (FA).
However, a source said that, “the FIRS and the Customs remittances are not the main target here but the NNPC” that has been remarkably attacked by the Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Mr. Hamman Tukur.
Meanwhile, another Pandora’s box, generally believed to target Obasanjo, will open at the Senate on Tuesday.
The Senate inquiry into the FCT activities will cover the following areas: Sale of Federal Government houses; concessioning of some federal government properties; issues of land allocation and revocation and demolition and compensation and other matters arising from the above.
Though the Chairman of the Senate Committee on FCT, Abubakar Sodangi, last Friday explained that the exercise was not to witch-hunt, it was learnt that the probe, originally billed for two days, might stretch over a month.
This is so, as many aggrieved victims are angling to question Obasanjo’s alleged arbitrary powers given to the then FCT minister, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai to clean up Abuja, among others.
Senator Sodangi explained in a statement at the weekend that, “the main objective of this exercise is to seek a means to redress issues and to provide succour, justice and equity to aggrieved persons.”
“I make bold to say that the exercise in its finality could provide the needed forum to exonerate the past administrations of actions taken by them, clear negative publicity and serve as a lesson and way forward for present and future administrations in the FCT and the nation at large.”
About 1,000 questions are said to have been drafted to guide the inquiry.